The Root Cause of School Shootings: Narcissism! Quote of the Day

“Mass school shootings began occurring around the same time and are now taking place, on average, weekly. As I said, guns are the means but the problem is what I term emotional entitlement syndrome — the narcissistic belief that certain feelings are all the excuse one requires to justify anti-social and/or self-destructive behavior.” John Rosemond: No, guns are not the problem [via winonadailynews.com]

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If there’s one thing I’ve learned growing up in and then fleeing one of the bluest states in the nation it’s that nothing, NOTHING!, is more important than feelings and those feelings are indeed enough justification to engage in whatever activity you so choose up to and including murdering a bus load of people. Any perceived negative consequence of your actions found upon those feelings is the fault of those who do not share, or even discourage, your feelings and they should be punished by the state.

Quite a bit of the actions of these teenage mass shooters, in my opinion, is attributed to their suffering, their isolation, their outcast caste from other students, and their upbringing and lack of parenting, and finally their decision to embrace the hatred of being. They grow to hate not any particular person, but existence itself. All they seek is to open the bottled up hatred that has been brewing the entirety of their lives. They hate everything and everyone. Kill themselves? No. If they could, they would kill everything and everyone. Their tortured and twisted mentality, gravitated towards the suffering and focused on it, until that is all they could see.

Here is a picture, a sketch, from Dylan Klebold, in his notebook. He writes at the top of the page that “existence = the box.” Then he illustrates the archetypal representation of an onion. The most inner layer, the core of the onion, he writes “most.” And outside that layer he writes “some.” And outside that layer he writes “few.” And outside that layer he writes “none” And completely outside of the box, far from the box, completely unattached to the box, is another box. And inside that box – he writes “me.”

For extra laughs, check the TTaG archives for what the Twitter crowd (I assume it’s Twitter) thinks an “assault weapon” is. One of the answers said a gun with a “very high” rate of fire, like 2 or 3 round a minute. A MINUTE

The root cause is almost always bullying that the schools refuse to stop, ignore or even take an active role in. Eventually the people being bullied feel they have no choice except to engage in a violent response that ends up being a shooting. This has been obvious for some time; but mostly ignored by those that want to blame guns.

There is always been bullying by one set of kids against another group of kids. But what is different today is that kids aren’t allowed to stand up to bullies, they’re punished for standing up for themselves.

When I went through school in the 70s and 80s it was an expected norm and right of passage that you would stand up to a bully, and that the teachers and administration would support you in doing so. Maybe not as a written protocol, but more as an unspoken rule, an unspoken expectation.

So now combined with narcissism that says your feelings are all you need to justify any action, no outlet to constructively stand up to a bully, and not being taught self-control and self-discipline, these mass murderers end up exploding into a homicidal rage.

Exactly. I would only add that in regards to the bullying issue the indoctrination camps, excuse me, public schools are ingraining the notion in their students that they cannot solve their own problems. Rather than solve for themselves, they are required to seek out a third party to solve their problems. The lesson being that they need the benevolence of the state to solve all their issues in life and that self-reliance is not only dangerous, but wrong.

I was an Air Force brat in the 70s and 80s, and therefore the new kid in school quite often. I was also a skinny 4-Eyed A and B student, so I was tested by the class bullies a lot. Per my dad’s rules, I ignored their taunts, but I fought back when they got physical. My wins and losses were about even, but the bullying invariably stopped. And I was never once suspended, given detention, or got the school paddle. Nor did I ever have homicidal thoughts.

I got bullied by a kid when I was in high school. It enraged me. I lived in a house with firearms that I had easy access to. So one day I snapped, and told the kid that we could meet right off of school property after that day’s classes and settle the issue once and for all. With vitriol, I told him we were going to fight. He was bigger than me, I knew I’d lose. I didn’t care, I’d had enough. At the end of the day he never showed. He also never bullied me again after that. The thought of murdering him and other people, especially with guns, never entered my mind.

I think what is different is that the entitlement/snowflake generation lacks the fortitude to stand up for themselves. They haven’t been raised to understand how bullying could even be possible, even though it’s always existed and always will. Add to that our current culture of “victimhood is a virtue” and it’s a recipe for disaster.

What a load of horse shit. Kids are mean and adults are mean too. You treat people the way you wan’t to be treated. If they are jerks, don’t deal with them. If they push too hard, you are going to have to push pack. And don’t worry about what other people think, everything in life is temporary (until you have kids, but that is another lesson). I had two fights in school, both times with people who did not really know me. Their mistake. Actually loss the second one, but he like to fight. Still did not have any trouble after it. I think I kind of scared him, he probably never fought anyone who’s goal was not to win, but damage the other guy.
Yes, I was the very definition of nerd. But I treated other kids with respect, would get along with anyone who was not a jerk, and just not deal with anyone who was.

Yes and no. Some of them are bullied. Some of them have mental problems, such as aspergers, depression, mental instability. Many were on anti-depressants whose main side affect is “suicidal thoughts.” And some of them seemingly had nothing wrong with them at all. But this mans statement absolutely, in my opinion, addresses the root cause. Them, allowing themselves to be bullied, is downstream of this root cause. That’s said, it very well be that the bulling fuels the narcissism.

why do people still think this way? very few things happen for a single reason. there are multiple major contributing factors in everything. and it is not about which can is more powerful, nature vs nurture, its about what CAUSED this scenario, nature ( born mentally defective )or nurture ( turned into a psycho via his environment).

Private Catholic education for 12 years, no bullying ever. It was not tolerated. Had one “kick fight” in the 7th. Grade. Don’t even remember why it started and no one was hurt. Got busted by a coach. Had to run 5 arounds practice field, side by side. We were exhausted and ended up becoming friends. Never experienced “mean girls”again . Fortunately did not call parents or would have been additional punishment for fighting at school.
Parents wouldn’t call teachers, due to being invited to move your child to a public school, if you didn’t like the rules.
Some kids today have never been subject to discipline.

I don’t think you realize just how hard that kind of learning environment to scale up. You went to a school where they could at least to a limited extent be selective of the families attending. I went to a public high school, but it was one of the best in the country at the time. I am under no illusions that my high school environment was not typical, nor reproducible across the entire country.

Pfft. I went to Catholic schools for most of my primary education and fought and saw many fights. Not only that, a great group of guys arrived from Vietnam for their free Catholic school education and they were sweet angels, especially when 20 of them fought as a gang and kicked in my back teeth in a gymnasium fight. Now, I guess they may have had it rough, you know, with the commies killing them in their own country, so I give them the benefit of the doubt today, but I didn’t like them back then, and we did make it a bit rough for them sometimes for the slightest sign of disrespect.

We’ve had corporal punishment for the past 10,000 years and that didn’t stop society from forming. Any intellectually honest person (like that family psychologist) has to admit that if it ain’t broke why are we trying to fix it? Life can be hard and keeping that from kids is also a form of child abuse IMHO.

Hell’s bells and shotgun shells, when I went to school there’d be at least two three fights a day. Bullies were numerous, people got picked in. No body brought a school to gun( ha ha) to shoot someone with. The teachers would have slapped the piss out of you. Getting bullied was good for me, Army DI’s weren’t all that, not after being initiated in school. LOL it was a right of passage to be thrown out of the locker room naked while the cheerleaders were practicing in the gym, then them assholes that threw you out would hold the door shut. That was back in the 60’s , now the school would get sued an all kinds of shit. We did get in trouble for shaving a guys head and crapping on his coat tho. The namby pamby school system and all this stop the bullying is making pussies out of the kids.

Congratulations ironicatbest, you are obvious the product of the lack of discipline. Nothing wrong with kids standing up. But your school was out of control, don’t glorify it. Also Army DI’s have a job to do. The way they do it is necessary. It is NOT to bully the recruits. How did they treat you at the end of training?

Undisciplined you say, if I got in trouble at school I got a whipping at home. I wasn’t a bully at school, I got picked on until I became a senior. My reference to boot camp, was towards the spoiled at home recruits who teared up for being yelled at…… I’ve noticed people here jump to conclusions before they digest what is posted.

I think you have brought the issue into a larger perspective. All of these movements are related. Not that one causes the other, they share some core underpinnings. Shortly after (or concurrent with) the movement you mentioned, similar shifts started for people with intellectual disabilities. Now it is common for the Nanny State to argue against toilet training a 14 yr old disabled child in favor of diapering him for the rest of his life.

Upstream in the comments, there was mention of a ‘lack of discipline’. If you rephrase this to a ‘lack of expectation’, it ties back to the issue you raise. A lack of discipline is just one manifestation of a lack of expectations. But, having expectations requires setting a standard, which inherently means establishing some behavior as more desirable than other. Influential elements of our society equate this to being an infringement upon others, or being ‘judgmental’; without seeing the ‘judgmental’ and infringing nature of their position, or of the long term consequences.

So, we end up diapering the intellectually disabled 14 year old rather than teaching him to use a toilet, we turn the mentally ill out into the cold on the street, and we inadvertently teach (some) of our kids that experiencing the slightest perceived infraction from another person is not acceptable at all.

“He bullied me”…so I murdered a bunch of unrelated kids. Pathetic snowflakes. Man(or woman) up. Kids can easily spot weakness. Wait’ll you get out in real life weenie…both of my youngest sons were bullied. They stood up for themselves with 100% backing from mom & dad. Especially my oldest who has a learning problem…they turned out great!

Pathetic snowflakes are the result of the way the kids are brought up. The whole point is to put them in an environment where they learn to deal with the issues in life. “They stood up for themselves with 100% backing from mom & dad.” Congratulations, at least you have figured it out. But the backing is every bit as important as the standing up.

“… the problem is what I term emotional entitlement syndrome — the narcissistic belief that certain feelings are all the excuse one requires to justify anti-social and/or self-destructive behavior.” — John Rosemond

Rosemond is a maverick among child psychologists. His basic position is that a million years of experience has taught human beings how to raise their children successfully. Modern psychobabble that contradicts this experience is necessarily wrong. He argues that much disruptive behavior (e.g. ADHD) is better controlled by traditional parenting than by medication.

My wife and I never had children. Given school administrators’ apathetic responses to bullying, I’m glad we didn’t. At child rearing age, I would have been ill prepared to deal with the administrators had my child defended himself against a bully. With the benefit of several more decades of living and considerable thought, I would teach a child never to provoke others and to brush off occasional, trivial incidents but to respond forcefully to a serious attack. After establishing that my child was truly an innocent victim, I would inform the administrators that he had an absolute right to attend school in peace and safety and that it was their responsibility to protect him regardless of the cost to his tormentors. If they failed to meet that responsibility, my next step would be to consult a lawyer and use the judicial system (e.g. assault charges and protection orders).

This whole, “feelings are everything” mentality comes from the post-modern mindset that seems to be a core progressive tenant. When there is no objective and universal truth, morals, or ethics, then everything is relative and valuable as anything else.

It’s why you can just “decide” you’re a woman, man, black, white, native, smurf, whatever you want. It’s also why we horrible white westerners can’t presume to judge cannibals, oppressors of women, human rights abusers, et cetra. “It’s just their culture, it’s their truth!” Garbage. Then you get a culture of victim mentality and rationalization for any action based on the “feels”.

Psychological issues is one reason. Stuff just isn’t getting treated, instead you get an award just for showing up.
Pharmaceuticals is another. Too many side effects.
And finally, yes, bullies. And no, you’re not allowed to defend yourself anymore, you get in trouble for that. So these kids take it until they snap.